I could see potential for the Draco to be much better than it was. Which is why I'm curious to know what Austen would have done differently if he had more control.

I wish I had the quote now from whoever said it... I don't even know who to look for. It *could* have been Joey Q... but I doubt it. i don't think it was Brevoort. I don't believe he was around as an editor then -- not for X-Books at least.

I digress,

Whoever it was said that Austen's view of how his run went down was very skewed. They weren't all on board with his plan but they allowed Mr. Austen to try his darndest and they took a chance on him. (as they have before with other writers such as Bendis on Ult. Spidey, Fraction with Fear Itself, and so on...)

To summarize the quote (and in no way do it justice): he failed, miserably. The story was nothing to what he pitched to initially, and between the delayed art, his inability to meet deadlines, and his aggressive meetings with their editors, it was no surprise he was setting up a title with DC while he was doing this.

That title, you may remember, was that awful Superman arc. It was like... Clark Kent Superman or something. An attempt at making the Supercast look like a Marvel cast. It failed, as all of Austen's titles do.

I tried re-reading the Draco tonight. I'm on part 3 and it's killing me. As if the inconsistant art isn't bad enough, there's the plot holes that I could drive the Blackbird through and the horrible characterizations done by him (I mean when did Bobby start flirting with the idea of with flirting with boys?). The biggest upset in the whole story is his smug attitude whilst he is rubbing his personal, religious, political, and other beliefs into your nose. And unfortunately, he does it through Nightcrawler. Who would never, under any other capable writer, do such a thing.

I was bothered with Kurt having more zest for religion than for the thrill of a fight but when I re-read this I remember the other version of a poorly-written Kurt that I hated. The one where he was a self-hating Christian mutant, with over-the-top, cliché daddy issues.

We are mostly adults here, and converse on an adult level, and we mostly expect a basic understanding of English.... If you spell that poorly and you are over 13 (our minimum age limit) I'm sorry, but your school needs to be shut down yesterday. If you're Geordie, well that doesn't excuse the spelling, it's just regional slang. Please, type your replies in Word or other word processor with a spell checker, run it through the checker, then copy and paste. It's hard to know what you're trying to say.

WOW, what a bitch. No wonder people got stressed out and didn't come back. S.K. I can see how ElfofDoom was a bit of a pain, but some of the dialogue being used towards her(?) is really... strong. But this was back in the day, so it's understandable.

Either way --

I think the whole story fell apart basically the second he tried to introduce an X-Equivalent super team on Azazel's side. It would be cool to see more done with this concept, with this team of bad guys, and with Azazel himself, but not by Austen and certainly not in the same light as this story arc.

Having finally finished re-reading it, I agree with every single point ElfofDoom made in her initial post. This story sucks.

At the risk of derailing the discussion completely, elfofdoom did create a moderation hassle for us. She had a tendency to issue challenges, post authoritative statements about X-men canon that were wrong, and make announcements on behalf of the staff. If I remember, she was quite rude in chat.

So the staff was understandably frustrated with her. With a forum as old as this one, it's easy to see mistakes made and things that could have been said or handled better. We're always growing and learning here. The past is in the past.

Regardless, I think we were all in agreement that The Draco was poorly presented and took away more from Nightcrawler's history than it contributed.